Debian Edu Astronomy packages

A package to reorganize menu branches in order to get a structure easy to use for teachers and students.

Gpredict is a real time satellite tracking and orbit prediction program for the Linux desktop. It uses the SGP4/SDP4 propagation algorithms together with NORAD two-line element sets (TLE).

Some core features of Gpredict include:

• Tracking of a large number of satellites only limited by the physical memory and processing power of the computer
• Display the tracking data in lists, maps, polar plots and any combination of these
• Have many modules open at the same either in a notebook or in their own windows. The modules can also run in full-screen mode
• You can use many ground stations
• Predict upcoming passes
• Gpredict can run in real-time, simulated real-time (fast forward and backward), and manual time control
• Detailed information both the real time and non-real time modes
• Doppler tuning of radios via Hamlib rigctld
• Antenna rotator control via Hamlib rotctld

KStars is a scientifically accurate desktop planetarium, visualising a graphical simulation of the night sky from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids. KStars addresses students and amateur astronomers of all levels.

The database of known objects can be extended and updated from local or remote databases, which is prepared for in a user-extendable interface. KStars suggests observations of particular interest like conjunctions with respect to the location of the user. And for user-selected targets it proposes the ones that are best-observable.

The software may be used for planning experiments around the globe, e.g. for remote controlled commercial services. But KStars also features an INDI interface to control local telescopes and cameras. Users with programming experience can script it via the KDE desktop bus.

OpenUniverse (OU for short) is a fun, fast and free OpenGL space simulator. It currently focuses on the Solar System and lets you visit all of its planets, most major moons and a vast collection of smaller bodies in colorful, glorious and realtime 3D. If you've ever had a chance to visit Mercury or asteroid Geographos, here you'll find them looking exactly the same way, following exactly the same path as when you've left them.

Notice that OpenUniverse is not actively being maintained anymore and that users are recommended to use Celestia instead.

Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real-time. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.

Some features:

• default star catalogue with over 600 thousand stars,
• information about the brightest stars (spectral type, distance, etc.),
• downloadable star catalogue extensions, for up to 210 million stars,
• all New General Catalogue (NGC) objects,
• images of almost all Messier objects and the Milky Way,
• real time positions of the planets and their satellites,
• 13 different cultures with their constellations,
• artistic illustrations of the 88 Western constellations,
• very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset,
• 7 panoramic landscapes (more can be made or downloaded from the website),
• scripting with ECMAScript,
• plug-in support: Stellarium comes with 8 plug-ins by default, including:
• artificial satellites plug-in (updated from an on-line TLE database),
• ocular simulation plug-in (shows how objects look like in a given ocular),
• Solar System editor plug-in (imports comet and asteroid data from the MPC),
• telescope control plug-in (Meade LX200 and Celestron NexStar compatible).

Stellarium should not be used for very high accurate calculation or ephemerids like eclipse predictions. However, it is the ideal program to prepare an observation evening with naked eye, binocular, or small telescope.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file. All of the major planets and most satellites can be drawn, and different map projections are also supported, including azimuthal, hemisphere, Lambert, Mercator, Mollweide, Peters, polyconic, and rectangular.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. Some maps are included in the xplanet-images package.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. This package includes some map files that can be used with xplanet.

El programa aa calcula la posición orbital de cuerpos planetarios y realiza una rigurosa reducción de coordenadas a un lugar geocéntrico y topocéntrico aparente (altitud y azimut local). También reduce las posiciones del catálogo de estrellas proporcionadas en el sistema FK4 o FK5. Se incluyen datos de las 57 estrellas navegables. La mayoría de los algoritmos utilizados son del Almanaque Astronomico (The Astronomical Almanac, AA) publicado por la Imprenta del Gobierno de los Estados Unidos (U.S. Government Printing Office).

El programa aa sigue los rigurosos algoritmos para reducción de coordenadas celestes exactamente como se diseñaron en las ediciones actuales del Almanaque Astronómico. La reducción a un lugar geocéntrico aparente ha sido comprobada mediante una versión especial del programa (aa200) que obtiene las posiciones planetarias directamente de la integración numérica DE200 del sistema solar del Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Los resultados concuerdan exactamente con las tablas del Almanaque Astronómico de 1987 en adelante (los Almanaques anteriores usan métodos de reducción ligeramente diferentes).

Ciertos cálculos, como la corrección por inclinación, no se proporcionan explícitamente en el AA pero se referencian. En estos casos el programa realiza los cálculo completos usados para construir las tablas del Almanaque (se proporcionan referencias).

Light Speed! is an OpenGL-based program which illustrates the effects of special relativity on the appearance of moving objects. When an object accelerates past a few million meters per second, these effects begin to grow noticeable, becoming more and more pronounced as the speed of light is approached. These relativistic effects are viewpoint-dependent, and include shifts in length, object hue, brightness and shape.

The moving object is, by default, a geometric lattice. 3D Studio and LightWave 3D objects may be imported as well. Best of all, the simulator is completely interactive, rendering the exotic distortions in real-time!

sunclock es una aplicación de X11 que muestra un mapa de la Tierra e indica la parte del globo iluminada dibujando las áreas diurnas oscuro sobre claro y las áreas nocturnas claro sobre oscuro. Además de proporcionar la hora local para la zona horaria predeterminada, también muestra la hora GMT, la hora legal y solar de las principales ciudades, su latitud y longitud y las distancias mutuas entre localizaciones arbitrarias en la Tierra. Sunclock puede mostrar los círculos de los meridianos, paralelos, trópicos y árticos. Incluye funciones que aceleran la velocidad del tiempo y muestran la evolución de las estaciones.

XTide es un paquete que proporciona predicciones de mareas y corrientes en una amplia variedad de formatos. Se pueden generar gráficos, texto sencillo y calendarios, o ejecutar un reloj de mareas en su escritorio.

XTide puede trabajar con el sistema de ventanas X, terminales de texto sencillo, o la Web. Esto se logra con tres programas separados: la interfaz interactiva (xtide), la que no es interactiva o interfaz de línea de órdenes (tide), y la interfaz web (xttpd).

El algoritmo que XTide utiliza para predecir mareas lo utiliza el Servicio Nacional de Océanos (NOS) de EE.UU. Es mucho más exacto que los relojes de marea simples que se pueden comprar en las tiendas. Sin embargo, requiere de más tiempo para predecir con exactitud las mareas que sólo con un algoritmo sencillo; se necesitan datos de cada ubicación concreta para la predicción de las mareas. Este paquete incluye un conjunto de datos de muestra para un solo lugar, con el fin de que pueda probar el paquete, pero para otro fin se requieren los datos disponibles en el paquete xtide-data (u obtenidos del sitio FTP de XTide).